IAM 764 Political Action

JULY 23, 2010

After 600 Aboriginal women and girls go missing or are found murdered in Canada, the federal government decides to throw-a-bone and give $10 million dollars. In March, the Canadian Minister of Justice budgeted $10 million over two years to address the issue of murdered and missing women in Canada, however, they have yet to figure out how to use the money.

Many justice organizations such as Amnesty International and Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) have made recommendations. Both organizations suggest that the $10 million is not enough to support the decades of injustice for Aboriginal women and girls.

NWAC said the $10 million cannot prompt real change in the lives of women who are experiencing violence, families who have never received justice, or appropriate counselling or support through victim services. NWAC have been collecting evidence, raising awareness, and developing policy directives to address the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls since 2005.

“It’s unclear. Is the $10 million new money, or just allocated within the same budget?” said Craig Benjamin, campaigner for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples at Amnesty International Canada. “There hasn’t been word on where the $10 million came from. But it is definitely not enough.”

NWAC Sisters’ in Spirit director Kate Rexe said if the money is spent wisely with commitment from all levels of government and NGOs, there is an opportunity to change the system and how it responds to violence and the disappearance of Aboriginal women and girls.

“NWAC recommends a comprehensive action plan based on four key areas of priorities: Increasing access to justice, reducing violence against Aboriginal women and girls, increasing economic security, and reducing the impact of children in care,” Rexe said.

How could the $10 million be used specifically? Mandatory police and justice officials training?

Since this $10 million is mandated by the Minister of Justice, Rexe said this funding should primarily address Aboriginals’ access to justice. Rexe said the funds should target: mandatory training of police officers and justice officials to understand the history of Aboriginal people, systemic violence and human rights abuses and today’s impact and outcomes of government policies such as the Indian Act.

Rexe said that navigating through the Indian justice system is complex. The right tools and resources are needed to support family, friends, and those who have experienced violence. “[Justice System navigation tools] will help families, as well as police and justice officials, in the reporting of cases, accessing programs and resources for help and healing, developing networks of support, and raising awareness of where gaps are in the system with the aim to fill in these gaps.”

According to the Department of Justice Canada, since 1991 it has implemented the Aboriginal Justice Strategy (AJS). The AJS programs are aimed at reducing the rates of victimization, crime and incarceration among Aboriginal people and helping the mainstream justice system become more responsive and sensitive to the needs and culture of Aboriginal communities.

In 2002, Jessie Sutherland, Director of Worldview Strategies, said in an article that the Aboriginal Justice Strategy may attend to some of colonialism’s surface wounds, but it certainly doesn’t address the systemic root problems nor offer lasting solutions. She said a successful Aboriginal Justice Strategy must go beyond participatory and indigenized justice processes. Rather, it must support healing and capacity building within First Nations communities as well as endeavor to decolonize and repair the relationship with the Canadian state.

Attempts were made to contact the Aboriginal Justice Directorate to provide details on implementation of the strategy, how it is funding community-based justice programs and the capacity building fund and how it measures the strategy, today. However, no response was given.

The federal government developed a volunteer Professional Development Centre for Aboriginal Policing (PDCAP) in 2006. PDCAP states it is the only program in Canada completely dedicated to providing advanced training specifically for police officers working in Aboriginal communities. The Centre provides three courses and one senior police officer course. It is small unit consisting of two staff members Inspector Lennard Busch, Manager of PDCAP and Sergeant Craig Nyirfa. The courses are taught by the two officers and they also invite speakers from across Canada to train officers on the history of Aboriginal people, the Aboriginal culture and courtesies.

For one officer to go through all three courses it costs $7,026. For a senior officer to take all four courses it costs $9,908. Nyirfa said it is a volunteer program and cost does affect some who cannot afford to travel and take the courses. “[Busch] is looking for opportunities to create scholarships for those who can’t afford the course. We’ve also taken steps to take training on the road so they don’t have to necessarily come to Ottawa to take the course.” Nyirfa mentioned numerous times that they are a small unit of two. The courses they offer are:

• Aboriginal Gang Prevention and Diversion Strategies

• Critical Incident Stress Management for Police Leaders Workshop (CISMPL)

• Integrated Approaches to Domestic Violence in the Aboriginal Community (IADV)

• Organized Crime Disruption in the Aboriginal Community (OCDAC)

• Senior Police Administration Course (SPAC)

Several federal and local police task forces have been created to combat violence against Aboriginal women, but Benjamin said that there are huge gaps in police accountability. “I’ve talked to many families who their loved ones have been missing or their loved ones have been found murdered and they don’t know whether the police are doing a good job or a bad job.

“There is no national or local policy on how to investigate missing Aboriginal women and girls. When families speak out, they feel stonewalled. Police seemed to not be concerned and are unresponsive,” Benjamin added.

Benjamin said it takes tremendous strength for Aboriginal people who are victims to maintain hope and continue to fight when there is no accountability. “On every level, there is no mandate or open discussion with police on missing Aboriginal women and girls,” he said.

Rexe said one of the problems is that Aboriginal women are often criminalized by police before an investigation starts. She recalled “A 13-year-old girl was taken from a shopping mall. When the mother reported her missing to the police, the officer asked, ‘Was she working?’ She said, ‘No, she’s 13-year-old.’ The officer said, ‘No, is she a prostitute?’”

Rexe said Aboriginal women are assumed to be drug addicts and prostitutes. She said that race, economic, and gender barriers to justice must be broken. Can $10 million over two years support that?

Can $10 million over two years put a dent in the legacy of injustice that contributed to and perpetuated violence against Aboriginal women? In future articles, events and policies throughout Canada’s history that created strong and still apparent gender-based and racialized barriers will be discussed. Some of the impacts are colonialism, residential schools, available statistical data, the Indian Act and a two decade period called the “60’s Scoop” or the “Stolen Generation.”

“All these programs were designed by the government to get the “Indian” out of Indians,” Rexe said.

There is hope

There is hope that things can change for Aboriginal women in Canada. There are many organizations like Battered Women’s Support Services, NWAC, Amnesty International, and many others fighting every day for Aboriginal women’s rights. There are Aboriginal mothers who have had their daughters stolen like Laurie Odjick and they continue to have the strength to fight and pressure the Canadian government and their communities to do more.

Gladys Radek, founder of Walk4Justice, who’s had her niece stolen, is leading a group of supporters to march on British Columbia’s Highway 16 known as the Highway of Tears.

British Columbia, according to a NWAC report, has the most “known” cases of missing and murdered women of any province, with 137 victims.

These organizations and supporters have rallied around and are fighting alongside the victims. They are not alone. There is hope that they can continue to persuade and mobilize more Canadians and the government to care and act on the issue of missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

Aboriginals are not asking for money and they need more than an apology. They are asking for justice, accountability, equality, social services, dignity, recognition of their culture, and healing. Frankly, they are asking for human rights.

Sidenote: Last year the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights received 50 submissions from NGOs slamming Canada for it human rights violations citing racism, sexism, aboriginal rights, poverty and Canadians facing death penalty overseas. The UN adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by a vote of the overwhelming majority of UN members states.

The Canadian government said it would “take steps to endorse this aspirational document in a manner fully consistent with Canada’s Constitution and laws” but ultimately rejected the declaration. Other countries who rejected and voted against the declaration were United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Since 2007, Australia is the only country who reversed its position.

Jamaal Bell is the executive editor for Race-Talk and the media relations manager for the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at Ohio State University. This story first appear in Race-Talk and Alternet.org.

There is some new concern that the Conservative government will
not fulfill their promise to fund the Sisters in Spirit project.

Attached you will see a copy of a petition to the House of Commons
calling on Parliament to ensure NWAC-AFAC receives sufficient funding to
continue on its work of protecting Aboriginal women. Please circulate to
your contacts and return as many signed petitions to our office as
possible no later than September 13 (the House of Commons resumes on
September 20.)

Attachment

FROM:
Karl Flecker
National Director
Canadian Labour Congress

New income data suggests troubling poverty trends are unfolding in Canada

by Armine Yalnizyan - Senior Economist Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

June 21, 2010

Every recession ushers in a rising tide of poverty.  As jobless and underemployed people struggle to make ends meet, the nouveau poor swell the ranks of the déjà poor.

The most recent statistical update on incomes in Canada was released last week, telling us that in 2008, as the nation headed into a brutal recession, there were just over 3 million Canadians living in poverty using the standard measure, Statistic Canada’s after-tax low-income cut-off (LICO).

Statistics on income data come in two years after the fact and much has happened since 2008.  But if past recessions are any guide, between 750,000 and 1.8 million more Canadians will be counted as poor before recovery is complete. More than one in seven Canadians may have tumbled into poverty before this is over. Many of them will be working.

Some will argue that this recession was brutal but short, and that Canada has been recovering faster than most other nations, so galloping poverty is not likely to be on the horizon.  But Canadians entered this recession more exposed to the economic risks of joblessness than during any other recession since the Second World War, and the types of jobs created since last summer put recovery on shaky ground.

Looking at the past tells us we have reason to worry, notwithstanding the signs of recovery in stock markets, GDP and profit margins.  The recession of the 1980s marked an important increase in poverty but the rise and fall of poverty was relatively quick because, despite dramatic job losses, income support mechanisms were in place.

The recession of the 1990s generated a much bigger escalation of poverty, both in magnitude and duration, because a protracted period of job loss ran into the scaling back of unemployment insurance and social assistance by federal and provincial governments.

As a consequence of that period, there was next to no cushion to soften the blow of the most shocking wave of job loss in our history during the opening six months of this recession, when almost half a million permanent and full-time jobs vanished.

More than half of the jobless went without jobless benefits at the outset of the recession (43%) and despite modest reforms to the Employment Insurance Act – reforms that were introduced with sunset clauses, and scheduled to end soon – less than half of the unemployed remained without jobless benefits at the peak of the recession (48%).  Dramatic reductions in asset limits for accessing welfare were put in the mid-1990s, designed to exclude any but the most destitute from income support.

The legacy of this “tough love” has meant that many jobless middle class workers face economic free-fall and/or the prospect of grabbing any job, at any wage or hourly schedule, just to survive, often at incomes far inferior to what they had before.

As for the nature of recovery, job creation since last summer has been marked by rapid growth in temporary positions and self-employment, and job expansion has been dominated by the public sector.

Government stimulus will end in the coming months, and the more permanent aspects of growth in the public sector – such as health care — will be eyed for constraint as governments deal with budgetary deficits.

It is by no means certain that the private sector will fill in for the role the public sector has played in the past year. Even without external triggers like European debt or American oil spills, the end of many time-limited temporary jobs may tip us into a made-in-Canada double-dip recession.  That second round of joblessness could hit just as hundreds of thousands of people exhaust their EI benefits.

It is not possible to predict how rapidly poverty will increase, but without question it will rise.  Despite the relatively short span of the current recession, brutal job losses, tattered safety nets and the tentative nature of the job recovery suggest a rise in poverty may be unfolding that is closer to the pattern of the 1990s than the 1980s.   That would mean the body count of Canadians finding themselves in straightened circumstances might be pushing five million – more than one in seven Canadians trying to get by.  That’s no way to run a recovery.

The news summed up the latest Statistics Canada data by telling us incomes flatlined in 2008. That yawner feeds into the sense that all is well, and that governments and markets alike need do nothing more.

But “business-as-usual” won’t get Canadians out of this hole.  Decision-makers in governments across the country have been working on an exit strategy from poverty for years.  It’s time to put those plans to work.  History shows, the hole can deepen quickly.   This is no time to lull ourselves to sleep.

Jack Layton: ‘We’ve had three elections in seven years… and we’re making progress’

Q – I’m someone who is a bit obsessive about values polling, I look at all of them that I can find, and what strikes me is that if the seats in the House of Commons were assigned to parties based on how their policies lined up with Canadian-stated values, the NDP would have a majority.

Why do we have a Conservative government when Canadian values actually line up so well with the NDP’s values and policies?

Well, the first reason is that we have an electoral system that permits massive distortions of the public views when it comes to the results, the seats, and therefore the governance. We’ve had that for some considerable time, it’s just particularly evident right now when you have a government that in two successive elections couldn’t get less than 62 per cent of the public to vote against them. Yet they end up with 100 per cent of the power… 100 per cent of the executive power, and maybe something than just a little less than 100 per cent of the legislative power. At the same time, they are transforming the judiciary with their appointments so they’re rapidly increasing their power in the judicial arm of government as well. So that is why you need proportional representation and why we continue to fight for it and push for it.

I think the reaction to the prorogation showed that there is an appetite for considering these issues and I think that is great. I love the grassroots nature of it. It gave it more legitimacy I think. So that is number one.

Number two, of course, you have the traditional governing parties that have alternated in and out, have had access to the support of the dominant forces in society. In particular, the largest, most powerful corporate entities, the banks and the oil companies, who seem to be the one constant when it comes to those who benefit by government policies. As the government alternates back and forth between red and blue they are tied to this notion that tax cuts and a shrinking capacity to do things together through our collective enterprises and public services is fundamental.

Finally, you’ve got, in our case, you’ve got a party that has been rebuilding since the populist impulse was split up in the early 90s with the creation of the Bloc Quebecois, on the one hand, and the Reform Party, on the other hand. So suddenly you had three parties with a populist edge, so putting our party back into play and strengthening it and having it develop and mature in some important ways has been a project that I think I was given by the membership to do, and we’ve had three elections in seven years to work at that and we’re making some progress.

Q – This is one of the things I’ve written about, and I guess it is a criticism of the NDP, but I see as preoccupation with political tactics which comes at the expense of longer term strategy and political vision. How do you respond to that criticism?

I don’t think it’s correct. I don’t accept the argument. In fact, what we’ve been working hard to do is to weave together the progressive elements and components of our country into a strong political force and that requires some pretty long-term thinking and I think that we have been engaged very much in implementing that.

Just to give one example that’s extremely important — because it’s been the blockage to our growth for the first 45 years of our party’s history — which was figuring out how to translate our founding principle. Which was that the people of Quebec constituted a nation within Canada. That was a part of our founding positions in 1961, weaving into real policy.

At our convention in Quebec City in 2006, we adopted, by 90 per cent of the vote, a very comprehensive policy called the Sherbrooke Declaration, which really was quite a major transformation of the way in which our party operationalized federalism. Reflecting principles that we’d accepted but that we’d never turned into comprehensive policy framework.

Having done that, this then opened the door for us to get almost half of a million votes in Quebec in the last election. Again, because we don’t have proportional representation that didn’t translate into the seats we should have had. But we did, on the other hand, get the first-ever Member of Parliament elected in a general election and we received more votes in Quebec in the 2008 election than we did in western Canada combined

Secondly, we took an extremely strong and unpopular position — at least at first blush it seemed unpopular, on the war. That wasn’t minor tactics — that was major strategy and reflected who we are as a party and where I believe the majority of Canadians are.

Unfortunately, sometimes there is a lag [laughs] between when you take these strong and major positions, that one was also taken at the Quebec City Convention in 2006, and when the public comes around to seeing that, ‘Hey, you know, that makes sense, we identify with that position.’ Sort of like Tommy [Douglas] when he took his position on the War Measures Act, which was not a tactical move at all, it was a serious strategic decision that immediately resulted in a plummeting in support. But it turned around to generate a growth of respect and ultimately support over the longer term.

I think our position on climate change was another very strong strategic move, where we worked to get through the House of Commons and successfully did, the first ever bill of any democratically elected government in the world, establishing the 80 per cent target by 2050, with intermediate targets according to the UN science, prior to Copenhagen. Unfortunately, because we have the senate, it never got around to putting the bill through and Harper called an election in 2008 and prevented that from being signed by the governor-general.

We then turned right around after the election and reintroduced it. [The NDP's Bill C311 was subsequently passed in the House of Commons.] But these are major strategic moves that have been done in close consultation with civil society, that climate change bill was worked on very closely with the Pembina and the Suzuki Foundations. Just like our position on the war, which was built on our relationships with civil society working around peace and disarmament issues, quite well documented in Steve Staples book around missile defence for instance.

Those kinds of building projects are why I believe we are now at 37 seats and likely to grow significantly in the next election.

Q – Do you think that in terms of where you’re at now in the polls that you will get beyond 37 seats?

Polls are the last thing to change… always the last thing to change. I mean the other thing I would mention to people who offer that criticism, is where were you (I’m not speaking about you personally), where were the people who share this view that we’re just into minor tactics when the coalition was proposed and worked on. I suggest people read Brian Topp’s book, I mean this is major. This was a strategic attempt to give effect to the will of the Canadian people as expressed in elections and then frustrated by the lack of PR. We’ve been ready to move on that in three successive minority parliaments, all of which is documented there and in my own book.

Q – This partly based on casual conversations with people who, I essentially think, want the NDP to do better, but I’ve heard the comment more than once about lack of vision. Partly, of course, this is because you have a media that is either indifferent or hostile.

Well, if they’re watching for our vision to be expressed in the At Issue panel on CBC, then I would suggest that they need to do a little deeper thinking [Laughs]. I mean, let’s face it, if you are counting on the news broadcasts to give an indication of what’s really going on, then what you are saying is you are willing to accept the proposition that a four-second sound bite on occasion ought to deliver the complete vision and perspective of a political party, because that is all they get. That is why I write books. That is why I make speeches. That is why we put video on the website. That is why we have 100,000 people on our e-news now.

We are building in the networking and social-networking world, so as to try and end the run of the massively concentrated media world that we have to deal with now, and to reach out in other ways. I mean we’ve never had so many people involved in our party in 25 years at the grassroots doing good stuff. How do we get the former chief of the Saskatchewan First Nations [former head of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, Lawrence Joseph] indicating to us that he wants to run for us in northern Saskatchewan? That kind of thing doesn’t happen if you are sitting around playing small minor, juvenile, tactical games.

I’m very, very excited about this and when we see what is happening in Quebec and the kind of people we’ve got coming to us and how we are growing there, I mean, we won the only seat in Alberta with a candidate who was running against the untrammeled, unlimited development of the tar sands. That was a courageous and bold strategic decision. Taking a big campaign jet and flying it from Stephen Harper’s constituency down to 3,000 feet over the tar sands, because they wouldn’t let us bring the media in to look at the devastation of the pollution. So I’m excited about it, Murray, I’ve got to tell you I’m excited.

Q – It is interesting that in terms of leadership you’re now polling second to Stephen Harper. I look at Harper and I can’t quite figure why he is so popular as a leader when his policies are in such contrast to people’s values. I think back to Ronald Reagan. Most of the policies Reagan pursued were opposed by the majority of Americans and yet they still re-elected him, and in part it was because they said, well at least this guy believes something. Is that part of Harper’s popularity?

Well, Reagan went on a positive emotional appeal. Harper goes on a negative emotional appeal. It’s based on fear. So he ends up with a base of support that responds to the notion that we should be fearful of one thing or another. Fear provokes a certain kind of anger and a certain kind of response. By the way, I think that is the reason why he hit a ceiling. He tried to break through it with the piano performance and With a Little Help from My Friends and suddenly people said, ‘Oh, maybe the guy isn’t all about fear.’ Canadians are fundamentally not fearful people, in the majority, they’re hopeful people.

Q – In the last election you stated you were running to be prime minister and I’m wondering what was the thinking behind that? I think the response of most people was ‘well that is not going to happen,’ and maybe some skepticism that you actually believed that. Would it not partly hamstring you in terms of allowing you and the NDP to be who you are, a force pushing from the left? If you’re running to be the governing party then does that not restrict you in terms of having to compete with the Liberals?

Not at all. In fact, most people, most Canadians except a certain small group that talks about this kind of thing, said: ‘Well, what did you think you were running for?’ I mean, that’s what I ran into. ‘Well of course. You’re running candidates in every riding, you’re laying out a full program, it’s carefully put together, you have a team, what are you running for if you’re not running for prime minister?’ What it was, was an attempt to say there is an alternative to the same old parties that we’ve had.

Q – People keep hoping that Harper will just go away, but wondering how we can get rid of the man.

Hope won’t do that, unless you convert it into action and activism, which is what we are spending a whole heck of a lot of time doing. Fortunately, we now have a model which, of course, can’t be translated directly by any means, but it’s a model that has showed you can end run some aspects of traditional politics. And that is what we saw flowing out of the Obama campaign with all kinds of new approaches and techniques that resulted in people getting involved, especially young people.

To me, it’s like going to the doctor, the first thing they check is your pulse. If there is something wrong with that, then you have an issue. Well, the equivalent of a pulse for democracy is the number of people that participate in something as basic as the election and we’re in free fall. Something is wrong with our political system in that, people are engaging less and less.

You’ve got hate-fests of attack on politicians of any stripe, and even the word politician is pronounced with derision and disdain by no matter who on these networks that are out there, including, sometimes, even the CBC. People don’t want to be associated with failure, so why would you go out and vote for a politician given that by definition a politician is going to be a failure. To the extent that you can drive down turnout then you have an opportunity to have those that are particularly fearful and therefore motivated to go out and vote… they’re niche markets, that you can then really, really go after. And this is Harper’s specialty and it is right out of [George Bush's advisor] Karl Rove.

Q – There does seem to be this gridlock in federal politics. It reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day, it’s just repeated day after day. I’m wondering if a new coalition agreement is possible with Ignatieff as Liberal leader? It would be necessary to go into the next election talking about a coalition so that you then have a mandate to pursue that once the election is over if the conditions are right.

What I’ve always said is that we are willing to work with any party that is willing to work with us on things we believe should be accomplished. That is how I go into elections and that is how I come out of elections and that’s how you operationalize them.

If you look at most of the European contexts, the parties run with their program and they try and convince as many people as they can to support their program and then they simply say, and Europeans of course know this after years and years of experience, that parties will come together in some combination after the vote. That’s also happened here. Stephen Harper was ready to combine with Gilles Duceppe; in fact he relied on Duceppe for the first two major confidence cycles, the Budget votes in 2006. People forget who it was that sat out those votes and kept him in power. It was the Bloc.

Q – Do you get a sense that the Liberals would be interested?

Who knows? [Laughs.] I thought we had it. We even had the signature of every single one of them — sent to the representative of the Queen. I thought that was pretty solid. But it sounds like the Bay Street bankers that met with Ignatieff had more influence than the broad sweep of Canadians that supported doing something right.

Ignatieff had a chance to be prime minister and he walked away from it. Harper needn’t be in power right now and that would have reflected, in fact, what the voters would have preferred in October 2008.

Q – I wanted to touch on a few policy issues. The Liberal and Conservative tax cuts, I know you know this intimately, have reduced government revenue by almost $80 billion a year. That is twice as much as the current deficit. You could pay off the deficit and have a national childcare and pharmacare program. These cuts were so radical that we actually hear talk of tax increases, probably for the first time in 15 to 20 years. Even two-thirds of the CEOs on Bay Street are saying we need tax increases on high-income earners.

I know the NDP has come out for a halt to further corporate tax cuts, but I’m wondering if you’ll be coming out to call for a higher tax brackets for the wealthy and the super-wealthy?

We’re analyzing the state of the government’s finances. Of course, we are trying to prevent some of these very moves that you are describing from being made. In fact, we moved in the House of Commons just three weeks ago that the corporate tax cuts for January 1, not be implemented. Unfortunately, we were unable to get the sufficient number of Liberals in the room to implement that, to have that motion adopted. That is why it was a bit of a surprise two weeks later to have Mr. Ignatieff come out and say we shouldn’t have more corporate tax cuts. I mean the speeches they were making against that proposition just three weeks earlier were quite strong.

What you have to do is sit down and look at the state of the finances. It is not possible to know now where precisely we are going to be. We do believe that a strong system of cap-and-trade needs to be put into place, and that’s a revenue generator, a very efficient revenue generator in terms of economic transformation towards a greener economy.

We are talking about the importance of the CPP and the doubling of the CPP over a period of time, which will have some implications in terms of revenues. Precisely what other proposals we need to bring forward is really always going to be a question of analyzing the state of the finances at the time an election actually happens, and laying out a program that is going to accomplish what we need to do step by step. At the same time, be reasonable as far as where Canadians would like to see us go. You make those judgments at the time and we don’t know when the election is going to be, so I don’t put out my election platform without having a clue about when the election is going to happen.

Q – I haven’t heard the party call for decreases in defence funding — or even a halt to the Conservative’s planned increases in that funding into the future. The current defence budget is huge — larger relatively than at any time since the height of the Cold War yet we have no identifiable enemies and our involvement in Afghanistan is coming to an end.

On the matter of budgets, we are constantly reviewing and revising our budget proposals and our campaign proposals to be prepared for whichever comes first. We do want Canada’s defence policy to focus on UN Peace Keeping Missions such as the Congo and others rather than the war in Afghanistan. Canada’s role in the UN effort is pitiful even as Canadians want us to play an active role as peacekeepers in the world.

Q – The Conservatives have let it be known that they may make public financing of parties an election issue. Is the NDP satisfied with the current system or are there any changes you would like to see to the current system?

We think it is vitally important to keep big money out of politics. Public financing is what allows for a leveling of the playing field, so you are able to bring ideas forward that do not have the support of the most powerful economic forces. We are certainly very strong defenders of that concept. We think it was a legacy left by Jean Chrétien, which was particularly important.

Q – As usual, Mr. Harper makes these calculations pretty carefully and given the amount of money they are able to raise, their assumption obviously is that they could do away with the public financing and they would hurt less than the other political parties.

I think that there is a bigger picture here. He would eliminate restrictions on third-party campaigning and that is where the big money would go. Then those who have groups with access to multi-million-dollar third-party type campaigning, like big pharma, big oil, big banks, etcetera, etcetera, would spend all kinds of money.

Q – The Liberals, and of course they say lots of things, so we’ll see what they say in their campaign. But it is interesting that Ignatieff a couple of months ago said that they would pursue a national childcare program regardless of the current deficit. Now, what is your sense of that, would you support such a national childcare program?

Not only would we support it, we have put legislation before the House to implement it. It went almost to third reading in the last Parliament and it’s before the House again. With a complete program all defined as legislation, it is in the form of the Canada Health Act. It respects Quebec’s unique situation because of the role of education in Quebec being so critical. So much so that the Bloc Quebecois voted for it. The Bloc Quebecois has never voted for a new social program in Canada, the only one and the first one they voted for was the NDP’s childcare bill. That is why the Code Blue people are so thrilled about it.

On the other hand, when we look at the Liberals on childcare, I remember the ‘93 Redbook, which said they would absolutely bring it in if the economic growth exceeded 3 per cent — 50,000 spaces per year, new spaces, each and every year that the GDP rose more than 3 per cent. The GDP rose more than 3 per cent throughout their entire tenure and they never brought it in.

We kept saying to Ken Dryden, when that last minority Parliament got moving, we said: ‘Put it in legislation, don’t do one-off agreements by province, because it simply won’t work. It can then be abandoned by any future administration without a vote of parliament.’ Which is of course, precisely what happened. Those idiots! They were so full of their own view about how things should be done that they didn’t lock it in, in legislation. This is why Tommy and New Democrats and ultimately Ed Broadbent and Bill Blakey insisted that Medicare had to be enshrined in the Canada Health Act. It couldn’t be left as just a fiscal set of agreements — and that is what we argued about childcare.

That is why we have written a National Housing Act — Olivia has brought it before, it is based on all the work we did back in the 90s — which for the first time ever it has gone through second reading and is now at a standing committee. So we’ve got a National Housing Act written the way it should be. We’ve got a Post Secondary Education Act, modeled on the Canada Health Act but for the federal government’s role in post secondary education. We will have is a complete legislative framework so that the moment that we’re able to put a progressive administration into place, the work will already have been done.

Q – One of the most emotional issues facing any political leader is the issue of Israel and the Palestinians and a lot of people are feeling it is hard to have a debate in Canada because people feel intimidated, often by charges of anti-semitism if they express support for the Palestinians. What is your party’s position on the recent decision by Israel to build 1,600 more units of housing in East Jerusalem, which of course, Palestinians claim is the capital of their future state?

We have a deep concern about that. We have constantly said that this growth of settlements exacerbates the set of obstacles that stand in the way of what we believe ought to happen, and what so many others believe ought to happen. Which is a comprehensive negotiation of a two-state solution. So naturally that is a deep concern. Even Stephen Harper’s government has said that they are opposed to that.

Q – The NDP has been proven correct on many issues, but rarely gets credit in the media, as you pointed out. The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin said that until there is a newspaper in the NDP’s corner their ideas won’t get validated. With the crisis in the media sector now, do you think it would be smart for progressive organizations and unions to perhaps actually buy a newspaper?

That’s a very interesting question. I used to believe that it was essential, but with the decline of newspaper readership and the rise of new media and electronic forms of communication it may be possible for those new forms of being in touch, particularly those that involve engagement with people, opportunities for back-and-forth.

The other thing is political parties would have a tough time going out and rustling up tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a newspaper. The union movement, I suppose, could look at that kind of idea and I know that different individuals have, from time to time. Frankly, there are so many challenges right now in front of working people and their organizations, they’re just being attacked on every front, it’s very difficult to look at that kind of an option. You’ve got organizations like rabble.ca and others that are out there engaging people in new ways. We’ve got these new tools and I think that their effectiveness was dramatically shown by the response to the prorogation.

Q – Any final remarks you’d like to make?

I’ll just finish with this comment. People ask me about these different things and it’s the old story about how you build a house. I want to build a brick house and that means when the shifting winds happen the house doesn’t fall down and you have to start again. I think in the past we neglected Quebec and were never quite able to figure it out. Although Ed came close, we had a robust Quebec organization in 1987, but we just weren’t able to break through.

When I became leader I said: ‘We’ve got to fix this. It’s like trying to build a house with a quarter of the foundation missing. You can’t do it and I’m asking for your mandate to start building this part of the foundation and then we’ll start building on top of that.’ I believe that we are well on the way with that project now. That means this house ain’t gonna get blown over anytime soon.

rabble news

APRIL 28, 2010

On April 28, the National Day of Mourning for workers killed on the job, we are reminded that although workplace injuries and fatalities may be accidents, they are preventable. While preventing injuries and deaths benefits both employer and employee, it is always left to government to create and enforce regulatory regimes that keep Canadians safe.

Many Canadians may not realize that the federal government has significant health and safety responsibilities. Unfortunately, federal underfunding and understaffing of safety inspectors are putting employees of federal departments, crown corporations and cross-provincial companies, such as trucking, air transport, banking and the like, in harm’s way.

The rate of disabling injuries in federally regulated workplaces increased by 5 per cent between 2002 and 2007 while the provinces have managed to cut their disabling workplace injuries by an average of 25 per cent over the same time frame.

The freezing of departmental budgets in the 2010 federal budget is already having tangible effects in an inability to improve safety in the workplace. With its budget frozen, HRSDC has no additional resources to beef up inspections and keep Canadians safe. Workers, among others, will pay the price for indiscriminate budget freezes.

There aren’t nearly enough federal inspectors to make the number of recommended visits to very high and high risk worksites. In 2006-07, only 16 per cent of the very high-risk workplaces received the requisite two visits a year and only 10 per cent of high-risk workplaces received their requisite one visit.

As of 2004 there was one federal inspector overseeing 7,000 employees. By 2007, HRSDC worsened the situation, having only one inspector per 8,000 employees. The situation has degenerated to the point where “telephone inspections” are now routine.

Many provinces have made concerted efforts to reduce workplace injuries by targeting high risk workplaces and hiring substantially more inspectors. Unfortunately for federal jurisdiction workers — particularly those working in trucking or at Canada Post — HRSDC continues to provide its inspectors with inadequate support.

One of the more troubling and neglected areas for workplace safety is First Nation’s reserves. While reserves fall under the prevue of federal labour laws, the inspectors have implicit instructions not to visit employers on reserves and provide health and safety rights. HRSDC does not appear willing to work with First Nation’s reserves to provide health and safety inspections and enforcement. In effect, those working on reserves are left without the same workplace rights that all other Canadians enjoy.

HRSDC needs to get serious about workplace safety and strive for a 20 per cent reduction in workplace injuries over five years through the targeting of high risk workplace and the hiring of more inspectors. It particularly needs to crack down on its own departments and crown corporations, which have some of the worst records for flouting the rules and putting workers in harm’s way. Finally, HRSDC needs to develop a strategy for providing workplace safety to First Nation reserves which are currently without workplace safety inspections.

Canadians expect their governments to create and enforce strong regulations that keep them safe both at work and at home. The federal government is falling far short of what Canadians expect.

David Macdonald is an Ottawa-based economist and research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The way back is for a Liberal and New Dem coalition to promise proportional representation.

By Murray Dobbin, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

Canada is in the midst of a crisis in democracy unique in its history. There is simply no other historical example that one can compare it to. It is multi-faceted and it affects every aspect of our national politics and political discourse. It is inexorably eroding the political fabric of the country and therefore our viability as a democratic nation.

First, we have a government so contemptuous of democracy that it is utterly unapologetic in trying to impose on the country an agenda opposed by probably 75 per cent of the population — treating its minority status not as a mandate to work with other parties but as an irritating impediment to re-engineering the country along the lines defined by the U.S. Christian right.

Second, we are amongst a tiny handful of countries still saddled with the absurdly anachronistic voting system that allows for government by executive dictatorship by any party that can get 40 per cent of the vote.

Third, Canada is witnessing a continuing catastrophic decrease in voter turn out with just 59 per cent voting in the October 2008 election — a result which put us 16th out of 17 peer nations. This aspect of the crisis is largely the result of the first two: a deliberate plan by the political right to downsize democracy through relentless partisanship and people’s frustration at seeing their votes count for nothing.

Fourth is the crisis within the Liberal Party and its virtual collapse as a vehicle for nation-building. The era of Trudeau and Turner has been replaced by that of Paul Martin and Ignatieff — cynical servants of the wealthy and spear-carriers for neo-liberal economic policies that are anathema to genuine democracy and nation-building. This internal crisis has led to a ceiling for their popular support of no more than 35 per cent. While one party’s problems may not fully qualify as a crisis in democracy, the absence of a strong centre-left mainstream party puts the fruits of democracy at risk.

Liberals without traction

No matter how out of synch with Canadians the Harper government becomes on a range of issues – the Jaffer/Guergis fiasco; the shameful exclusion of abortion from Ottawa’s maternal health program; the contempt for Parliament; the chronic lying – the Liberals cannot gain any traction.

While it is just one poll, a recent Harris-Decima survey showed the Liberals at just 27 per cent and the Conservatives at 29 per cent. The most significant number was the NDP at 20 per cent, just seven points behind the once proud, and arrogant, ‘natural governing party.’

The Liberal Party is in the midst of its greatest crisis in decades. Paul Martin and the thugs who ran his leadership campaign destroyed the unity of the party. It will be a long time before it recovers. This is why the Liberals are floundering — the magic and good judgment (and smart people) that came from feeling entitled to govern the country is gone. Liberals are confused, lack confidence, and don’t like each other much. And instead of a leader with a history in the party who might actually understand the problem, they have Ignatieff, a political idiot savant incapable of repairing the party.

Now, more than ever, a coalition

The only way out of this impasse — for the Liberals and the country – is clear to everyone except the one person and party critical to making it happen. The solution to all of these elements of the democratic crisis is the implementation of proportional representation, preceded by a formal commitment by the opposition parties to form a coalition government after the next election.

A coalition of Liberals and the NDP, based on a signed accord committing both to a minimum but substantive legislative agenda, and supported informally by the Bloc is not just one possible strategy to rid the country of Stephen Harper and his wrecking crew. It is the only strategy.

Nothing else will work. Good luck to the NDP in their quest to replace the Liberals, but we just don’t have that much time. The Liberals, it should now be clear, are incapable of winning a majority (this is a good thing) with Ignatieff and quite likely with any other leader on the horizon.

By Murray Dobbin

Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney should be congratulated for informing Canada that the emperor has no clothes. The emperor, in this case, is the Canadian corporate elite.

Carney recently had the nerve to say what everyone on Bay Street knows: the largest Canadian corporations are doing a teribble job at increasing productivity and therefore at raising Canadian living standards and competing internationally. He noted that productivity had actually declined through the recession when during literally every other recession it has gone up.

He left no doubt who was responsible: “In general, while there is always more to do, governments have put in place conditions for a productivity revival. Business, thus far, has disappointed.”

Governments since Brian Mulroney’s have given Bay Street virtually everything they have asked for:  the lowest corporate taxes in the developed world; twenty years of “labour flexibility” which has flat-lined wages since 1980; massive deregulation; a plethora of free trade agreements; huge cuts to EI – the whole corporate wish-list.

None of it has made one iota of difference except that Canadian corporations have a tonne of cash sitting in their coffers, cash they were supposed to spend on innovation, technology, training and – gawd forbid – taking risks.

But as study after study has shown, Canadian corporations are amongst the most risk-averse anywhere. Doug Porter, when he was BMO Nesbitt Burns deputy chief economist, pointed out that free trade had not lived up to its promises. “The main reason for pushing for the FTA in the ‘80s was very similar reasoning and, of course, we have seen Canadian productivity still lag well behind that of the US.”

Porter attributed the problem to two very different business cultures: “The US is just much more entrepreneurial.” Two studies on competitiveness (1991 and 2001) by Harvard Business School’s Michael E. Porter agreed: “The absence of intense local rivalry combined with customers who were not demanding produced weak pressures for firm productivity and upgrading … Research uncovered key weaknesses in the sophistication of company operations and strategy.” Canadian firms that did “compete” internationally took the easy way out – exporting almost exclusively to the US and relying on “…natural resource advantages or lower labour costs than other G-7 competitors instead of sophisticated products and processes.”

And it’s actually gotten worse since corporations got all those tax cuts. In 1998 the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report ranked Canada as sixth in the world but that dipped to 12^th by 2004. While we have managed to get back to 9^th in 2009-2010 (the US ranks number two) it had little to do with Canadian companies taking on the world. We still lag badly in terms of investment in new equipment, technology and sophisticated training.

The almost exclusive focus on the US market – when it is the emerging markets that show almost all the growth – suggests that Canadian business is incapable on its own of adapting to a new world. Even former World Bank president Jim Wolfensohn expressed surprise that Canada sent just six per cent of its exports in 2005 to the huge and growing markets like China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Mark Carney’s broadside apparently reflects the government’s concern about anemic future economic growth. But it is the Harper government that has the most radical “get out of the way of business” approach to the economy. It’s deliberate gutting of federal revenues through huge tax cuts to both the wealthy and corporations will have a major long-term impact on productivity and competitiveness. The deterioration of infrastructure, the fading of pure science that feeds technology, the lack of incentives for the alternative energy sector – all of these problems are exacerbated by Conservative policy.

Canadian corporate culture is not going to change over night. That fact alone dictates that the government has to reinstate a robust industrial policy that kick-starts a new economy focused on alternative energy technology, innovation and trade with growing economies. That means taking back the tax cuts and using the money to guide the economy.

[This commentary was first published in the Toronto Star, on April 5th]